Perfect casting is something that happens rarely in the career of any actor – starring or supporting – but it happened for Tom Sizemore in the late 90s, just as he was getting to be known for amoral tough guy roles, but also for drug abuse in his personal life. Steven Spielberg offered him the part of Sgt Mike Horvath in Saving Private Ryan, and told him that he would be given a drug test at the end of every day of principal photography and his scenes would be re-shot with someone else if he failed even one.
Sizemore stayed clean and played the tough, beefy, courageous soldier who is to be the loyal subordinate of Capt John Miller, played by Tom Hanks, Miller being the high-school teacher in civilian life who in 1944 is entrusted with the almost hopeless, quixotic mission of rescuing a certain private in occupied France on compassionate grounds because all three of this man’s brothers had been killed in action. All the tricks and mannerisms that Sizemore had been cultivating for his tough guy crime roles, his faintly sweaty and pop-eyed relish for action and violence, his disdain for the rulebook and streak of ruthlessness, all these character traits were reversed and redeemed and even ennobled by his persona as a dedicated military man.
